Confessions of an English OpiumEater

T >> Thomas De Quincey >> Confessions of an English OpiumEater

CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER:
BEING AN EXTRACT FROM THE
LIFE OF A SCHOLAR.


_From the "London Magazine" for September_ 1821.




TO THE READER


I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable
period in my life: according to my application of it, I trust that it
will prove not merely an interesting record, but in a considerable degree
useful and instructive. In _that_ hope it is that I have drawn it up;
and _that_ must be my apology for breaking through that delicate and
honourable reserve which, for the most part, restrains us from the public
exposure of our own errors and infirmities. Nothing, indeed, is more
revolting to English feelings than the spectacle of a human being
obtruding on our notice his moral ulcers or scars, and tearing away that
"decent drapery" which time or indulgence to human frailty may have drawn
over them; accordingly, the greater part of _our_ confessions (that is,
spontaneous and extra-judicial confessions) proceed from demireps,
adventurers, or swindlers: and for any such acts of gratuitous
self-humiliation from those who can be supposed in sympathy with the
decent and self-respecting part of society, we must look to French
literature, or to that part of the German which is tainted with the
spurious and defective sensibility of the French. All this I feel so
forcibly, and so nervously am I alive to reproach of this tendency, that
I have for many months hesitated about the propriety of allowing this or
any part of my narrative to come before the public eye until after my
death (when, for many reasons, the whole will be published); and it is
not without an anxious review of the reasons for and against this step
that I have at last concluded on taking it.

Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public notice: they
court privacy and solitude: and even in their choice of a grave will
sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the
churchyard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the great family of
man, and wishing (in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth)

Humbly to express
A penitential loneliness.

It is well, upon the whole, and for the interest of us all, that it
should be so: nor would I willingly in my own person manifest a disregard
of such salutary feelings, nor in act or word do anything to weaken them;
but, on the one hand, as my self-accusation does not amount to a
confession of guilt, so, on the other, it is possible that, if it _did_,
the benefit resulting to others from the record of an experience
purchased at so heavy a price might compensate, by a vast overbalance,
for any violence done to the feelings I have noticed, and justify a
breach of the general rule. Infirmity and misery do not of necessity
imply guilt. They approach or recede from shades of that dark alliance,
in proportion to the probable motives and prospects of the offender, and
the palliations, known or secret, of the offence; in proportion as the
temptations to it were potent from the first, and the resistance to it,
in act or in effort, was earnest to the last. For my own part, without
breach of truth or modesty, I may affirm that my life has been, on the
whole, the life of a philosopher: from my birth I was made an
intellectual creature, and intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits
and pleasures have been, even from my schoolboy days. If opium-eating be
a sensual pleasure, and if I am bound to confess that I have indulged in
it to an excess not yet _recorded_ {1} of any other man, it is no less
true that I have struggled against this fascinating enthralment with a
religious zeal, and have at length accomplished what I never yet heard
attributed to any other man--have untwisted, almost to its final links,
the accursed chain which fettered me. Such a self-conquest may
reasonably be set off in counterbalance to any kind or degree of self-
indulgence. Not to insist that in my case the self-conquest was
unquestionable, the self-indulgence open to doubts of casuistry,
according as that name shall be extended to acts aiming at the bare
relief of pain, or shall be restricted to such as aim at the excitement
of positive pleasure.

Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge; and if I did, it is possible that
I might still resolve on the present act of confession in consideration
of the service which I may thereby render to the whole class of opium-
eaters. But who are they? Reader, I am sorry to say a very numerous
class indeed. Of this I became convinced some years ago by computing at
that time the number of those in one small class of English society (the
class of men distinguished for talents, or of eminent station) who were
known to me, directly or indirectly, as opium-eaters; such, for instance,
as the eloquent and benevolent ---, the late Dean of ---, Lord ---, Mr.
--- the philosopher, a late Under-Secretary of State (who described to me
the sensation which first drove him to the use of opium in the very same
words as the Dean of ---, viz., "that he felt as though rats were gnawing
and abrading the coats of his stomach"), Mr. ---, and many others hardly
less known, whom it would be tedious to mention. Now, if one class,
comparatively so limited, could furnish so many scores of cases (and
_that_ within the knowledge of one single inquirer), it was a natural
inference that the entire population of England would furnish a
proportionable number. The soundness of this inference, however, I
doubted, until some facts became known to me which satisfied me that it
was not incorrect. I will mention two. (1) Three respectable London
druggists, in widely remote quarters of London, from whom I happened
lately to be purchasing small quantities of opium, assured me that the
number of _amateur_ opium-eaters (as I may term them) was at this time
immense; and that the difficulty of distinguishing those persons to whom
habit had rendered opium necessary from such as were purchasing it with a
view to suicide, occasioned them daily trouble and disputes. This
evidence respected London only. But (2)--which will possibly surprise
the reader more--some years ago, on passing through Manchester, I was
informed by several cotton manufacturers that their workpeople were
rapidly getting into the practice of opium-eating; so much so, that on a
Saturday afternoon the counters of the druggists were strewed with pills
of one, two, or three grains, in preparation for the known demand of the
evening. The immediate occasion of this practice was the lowness of
wages, which at that time would not allow them to indulge in ale or
spirits, and wages rising, it may be thought that this practice would
cease; but as I do not readily believe that any man having once tasted
the divine luxuries of opium will afterwards descend to the gross and
mortal enjoyments of alcohol, I take it for granted

That those eat now who never ate before;
And those who always ate, now eat the more.

Indeed, the fascinating powers of opium are admitted even by medical
writers, who are its greatest enemies. Thus, for instance, Awsiter,
apothecary to Greenwich Hospital, in his "Essay on the Effects of Opium"
(published in the year 1763), when attempting to explain why Mead had not
been sufficiently explicit on the properties, counteragents, &c., of this
drug, expresses himself in the following mysterious terms ([Greek text]):
"Perhaps he thought the subject of too delicate a nature to be made
common; and as many people might then indiscriminately use it, it would
take from that necessary fear and caution which should prevent their
experiencing the extensive power of this drug, _for there are many
properties in it, if universally known, that would habituate the use, and
make it more in request with us than with Turks themselves_; the result
of which knowledge," he adds, "must prove a general misfortune." In the
necessity of this conclusion I do not altogether concur; but upon that
point I shall have occasion to speak at the close of my Confessions,
where I shall present the reader with the _moral_ of my narrative.




PRELIMINARY CONFESSIONS


These preliminary confessions, or introductory narrative of the youthful
adventures which laid the foundation of the writer's habit of
opium-eating in after-life, it has been judged proper to premise, for
three several reasons:

1. As forestalling that question, and giving it a satisfactory answer,
which else would painfully obtrude itself in the course of the Opium
Confessions--"How came any reasonable being to subject himself to such a
yoke of misery; voluntarily to incur a captivity so servile, and
knowingly to fetter himself with such a sevenfold chain?"--a question
which, if not somewhere plausibly resolved, could hardly fail, by the
indignation which it would be apt to raise as against an act of wanton
folly, to interfere with that degree of sympathy which is necessary in
any case to an author's purposes.

2. As furnishing a key to some parts of that tremendous scenery which
afterwards peopled the dreams of the Opium-eater.

3. As creating some previous interest of a personal sort in the
confessing subject, apart from the matter of the confessions, which
cannot fail to render the confessions themselves more interesting. If a
man "whose talk is of oxen" should become an opium-eater, the probability
is that (if he is not too dull to dream at all) he will dream about oxen;
whereas, in the case before him, the reader will find that the
Opium-eater boasteth himself to be a philosopher; and accordingly, that
the phantasmagoria of _his_ dreams (waking or sleeping, day-dreams or
night-dreams) is suitable to one who in that character

Humani nihil a se alienum putat.

For amongst the conditions which he deems indispensable to the sustaining
of any claim to the title of philosopher is not merely the possession of
a superb intellect in its _analytic_ functions (in which part of the
pretensions, however, England can for some generations show but few
claimants; at least, he is not aware of any known candidate for this
honour who can be styled emphatically _a subtle thinker_, with the
exception of _Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, and in a narrower department of
thought with the recent illustrious exception {2} of _David Ricardo_) but
also on such a constitution of the _moral_ faculties as shall give him an
inner eye and power of intuition for the vision and the mysteries of our
human nature: _that_ constitution of faculties, in short, which (amongst
all the generations of men that from the beginning of time have deployed
into life, as it were, upon this planet) our English poets have possessed
in the highest degree, and Scottish professors {3} in the lowest.

I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium-eater, and
have suffered, very unjustly, in the opinion of my acquaintance from
being reputed to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which I
shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in this practice
purely for the sake of creating an artificial state of pleasurable
excitement. This, however, is a misrepresentation of my case. True it
is that for nearly ten years I did occasionally take opium for the sake
of the exquisite pleasure it gave me; but so long as I took it with this
view I was effectually protected from all material bad consequences by
the necessity of interposing long intervals between the several acts of
indulgence, in order to renew the pleasurable sensations. It was not for
the purpose of creating pleasure, but of mitigating pain in the severest
degree, that I first began to use opium as an article of daily diet. In
the twenty-eighth year of my age a most painful affection of the stomach,
which I had first experienced about ten years before, attacked me in
great strength. This affection had originally been caused by extremities
of hunger, suffered in my boyish days. During the season of hope and
redundant happiness which succeeded (that is, from eighteen to twenty-
four) it had slumbered; for the three following years it had revived at
intervals; and now, under unfavourable circumstances, from depression of
spirits, it attacked me with a violence that yielded to no remedies but
opium. As the youthful sufferings which first produced this derangement
of the stomach were interesting in themselves, and in the circumstances
that attended them, I shall here briefly retrace them.

My father died when I was about seven years old, and left me to the care
of four guardians. I was sent to various schools, great and small; and
was very early distinguished for my classical attainments, especially for
my knowledge of Greek. At thirteen I wrote Greek with ease; and at
fifteen my command of that language was so great that I not only composed
Greek verses in lyric metres, but could converse in Greek fluently and
without embarrassment--an accomplishment which I have not since met with
in any scholar of my times, and which in my case was owing to the
practice of daily reading off the newspapers into the best Greek I could
furnish _extempore_; for the necessity of ransacking my memory and
invention for all sorts and combinations of periphrastic expressions as
equivalents for modern ideas, images, relations of things, &c., gave me a
compass of diction which would never have been called out by a dull
translation of moral essays, &c. "That boy," said one of my masters,
pointing the attention of a stranger to me, "that boy could harangue an
Athenian mob better than you and I could address an English one." He who
honoured me with this eulogy was a scholar, "and a ripe and a good one,"
and of all my tutors was the only one whom I loved or reverenced.
Unfortunately for me (and, as I afterwards learned, to this worthy man's
great indignation), I was transferred to the care, first of a blockhead,
who was in a perpetual panic lest I should expose his ignorance; and
finally to that of a respectable scholar at the head of a great school on
an ancient foundation. This man had been appointed to his situation by
--- College, Oxford, and was a sound, well-built scholar, but (like most
men whom I have known from that college) coarse, clumsy, and inelegant. A
miserable contrast he presented, in my eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of
my favourite master; and beside, he could not disguise from my hourly
notice the poverty and meagreness of his understanding. It is a bad
thing for a boy to be and to know himself far beyond his tutors, whether
in knowledge or in power of mind. This was the case, so far as regarded
knowledge at least, not with myself only, for the two boys, who jointly
with myself composed the first form, were better Grecians than the head-
master, though not more elegant scholars, nor at all more accustomed to
sacrifice to the Graces. When I first entered I remember that we read
Sophocles; and it was a constant matter of triumph to us, the learned
triumvirate of the first form, to see our "Archididascalus" (as he loved
to be called) conning our lessons before we went up, and laying a regular
train, with lexicon and grammar, for blowing up and blasting (as it were)
any difficulties he found in the choruses; whilst _we_ never condescended
to open our books until the moment of going up, and were generally
employed in writing epigrams upon his wig or some such important matter.
My two class-fellows were poor, and dependent for their future prospects
at the university on the recommendation of the head-master; but I, who
had a small patrimonial property, the income of which was sufficient to
support me at college, wished to be sent thither immediately. I made
earnest representations on the subject to my guardians, but all to no
purpose. One, who was more reasonable and had more knowledge of the
world than the rest, lived at a distance; two of the other three resigned
all their authority into the hands of the fourth; and this fourth, with
whom I had to negotiate, was a worthy man in his way, but haughty,
obstinate, and intolerant of all opposition to his will. After a certain
number of letters and personal interviews, I found that I had nothing to
hope for, not even a compromise of the matter, from my guardian.
Unconditional submission was what he demanded, and I prepared myself,
therefore, for other measures. Summer was now coming on with hasty
steps, and my seventeenth birthday was fast approaching, after which day
I had sworn within myself that I would no longer be numbered amongst
schoolboys. Money being what I chiefly wanted, I wrote to a woman of
high rank, who, though young herself, had known me from a child, and had
latterly treated me with great distinction, requesting that she would
"lend" me five guineas. For upwards of a week no answer came, and I was
beginning to despond, when at length a servant put into my hands a double
letter with a coronet on the seal. The letter was kind and obliging. The
fair writer was on the sea-coast, and in that way the delay had arisen;
she enclosed double of what I had asked, and good-naturedly hinted that
if I should _never_ repay her, it would not absolutely ruin her. Now,
then, I was prepared for my scheme. Ten guineas, added to about two
which I had remaining from my pocket-money, seemed to me sufficient for
an indefinite length of time; and at that happy age, if no _definite_
boundary can be assigned to one's power, the spirit of hope and pleasure
makes it virtually infinite.

It is a just remark of Dr. Johnson's (and, what cannot often be said of
his remarks, it is a very feeling one), that we never do anything
consciously for the last time (of things, that is, which we have long
been in the habit of doing) without sadness of heart. This truth I felt
deeply when I came to leave ---, a place which I did not love, and where
I had not been happy. On the evening before I left --- for ever, I
grieved when the ancient and lofty schoolroom resounded with the evening
service, performed for the last time in my hearing; and at night, when
the muster-roll of names was called over, and mine (as usual) was called
first, I stepped forward, and passing the head-master, who was standing
by, I bowed to him, and looked earnestly in his face, thinking to myself,
"He is old and infirm, and in this world I shall not see him again." I
was right; I never _did_ see him again, nor ever shall. He looked at me
complacently, smiled good-naturedly, returned my salutation (or rather my
valediction), and we parted (though he knew it not) for ever. I could
not reverence him intellectually, but he had been uniformly kind to me,
and had allowed me many indulgences; and I grieved at the thought of the
mortification I should inflict upon him.

The morning came which was to launch me into the world, and from which my
whole succeeding life has in many important points taken its colouring. I
lodged in the head-master's house, and had been allowed from my first
entrance the indulgence of a private room, which I used both as a
sleeping-room and as a study. At half after three I rose, and gazed with
deep emotion at the ancient towers of ---, "drest in earliest light," and
beginning to crimson with the radiant lustre of a cloudless July morning.
I was firm and immovable in my purpose; but yet agitated by anticipation
of uncertain danger and troubles; and if I could have foreseen the
hurricane and perfect hail-storm of affliction which soon fell upon me,
well might I have been agitated. To this agitation the deep peace of the
morning presented an affecting contrast, and in some degree a medicine.
The silence was more profound than that of midnight; and to me the
silence of a summer morning is more touching than all other silence,
because, the light being broad and strong as that of noonday at other
seasons of the year, it seems to differ from perfect day chiefly because
man is not yet abroad; and thus the peace of nature and of the innocent
creatures of God seems to be secure and deep only so long as the presence
of man and his restless and unquiet spirit are not there to trouble its
sanctity. I dressed myself, took my hat and gloves, and lingered a
little in the room. For the last year and a half this room had been my
"pensive citadel": here I had read and studied through all the hours of
night, and though true it was that for the latter part of this time I,
who was framed for love and gentle affections, had lost my gaiety and
happiness during the strife and fever of contention with my guardian,
yet, on the other hand, as a boy so passionately fond of books, and
dedicated to intellectual pursuits, I could not fail to have enjoyed many
happy hours in the midst of general dejection. I wept as I looked round
on the chair, hearth, writing-table, and other familiar objects, knowing
too certainly that I looked upon them for the last time. Whilst I write
this it is eighteen years ago, and yet at this moment I see distinctly,
as if it were yesterday, the lineaments and expression of the object on
which I fixed my parting gaze. It was a picture of the lovely ---, which
hung over the mantelpiece, the eyes and mouth of which were so beautiful,
and the whole countenance so radiant with benignity and divine
tranquillity, that I had a thousand times laid down my pen or my book to
gather consolation from it, as a devotee from his patron saint. Whilst I
was yet gazing upon it the deep tones of --- clock proclaimed that it was
four o'clock. I went up to the picture, kissed it, and then gently
walked out and closed the door for ever!

* * * * *

So blended and intertwisted in this life are occasions of laughter and of
tears, that I cannot yet recall without smiling an incident which
occurred at that time, and which had nearly put a stop to the immediate
execution of my plan. I had a trunk of immense weight, for, besides my
clothes, it contained nearly all my library. The difficulty was to get
this removed to a carrier's: my room was at an aerial elevation in the
house, and (what was worse) the staircase which communicated with this
angle of the building was accessible only by a gallery, which passed the
head-master's chamber door. I was a favourite with all the servants, and
knowing that any of them would screen me and act confidentially, I
communicated my embarrassment to a groom of the head-master's. The groom
swore he would do anything I wished, and when the time arrived went
upstairs to bring the trunk down. This I feared was beyond the strength
of any one man; however, the groom was a man

Of Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies;

and had a back as spacious as Salisbury Plain. Accordingly he persisted
in bringing down the trunk alone, whilst I stood waiting at the foot of
the last flight in anxiety for the event. For some time I heard him
descending with slow and firm steps; but unfortunately, from his
trepidation, as he drew near the dangerous quarter, within a few steps of
the gallery, his foot slipped, and the mighty burden falling from his
shoulders, gained such increase of impetus at each step of the descent,
that on reaching the bottom it trundled, or rather leaped, right across,
with the noise of twenty devils, against the very bedroom door of the
Archididascalus. My first thought was that all was lost, and that my
only chance for executing a retreat was to sacrifice my baggage. However,
on reflection I determined to abide the issue. The groom was in the
utmost alarm, both on his own account and on mine, but, in spite of this,
so irresistibly had the sense of the ludicrous in this unhappy
_contretemps_ taken possession of his fancy, that he sang out a long,
loud, and canorous peal of laughter, that might have wakened the Seven
Sleepers. At the sound of this resonant merriment, within the very ears
of insulted authority, I could not myself forbear joining in it; subdued
to this, not so much by the unhappy _etourderie_ of the trunk, as by the
effect it had upon the groom. We both expected, as a matter of course,
that Dr. --- would sally, out of his room, for in general, if but a mouse
stirred, he sprang out like a mastiff from his kennel. Strange to say,
however, on this occasion, when the noise of laughter had ceased, no
sound, or rustling even, was to be heard in the bedroom. Dr. --- had a
painful complaint, which, sometimes keeping him awake, made his sleep
perhaps, when it did come, the deeper. Gathering courage from the
silence, the groom hoisted his burden again, and accomplished the
remainder of his descent without accident. I waited until I saw the
trunk placed on a wheelbarrow and on its road to the carrier's; then,
"with Providence my guide," I set off on foot, carrying a small parcel
with some articles of dress under my arm; a favourite English poet in one
pocket, and a small 12mo volume, containing about nine plays of
Euripides, in the other.

It had been my intention originally to proceed to Westmoreland, both from
the love I bore to that country and on other personal accounts. Accident,
however, gave a different direction to my wanderings, and I bent my steps
towards North Wales.